Professor Philip Lane:

The way to phrase this is that this has not been an issue of concern. It has not come to my attention that there has been a systemic deviation from that. I have read some of these contracts and I have gone through contracts. Often with contracts - even with that first page - is the way the interest rate is laid out is not a fixed number. When one looks at the phrasing of what the interest rate will be, it leads to some of these problems of ambiguity and so on. When the Chairman says it is very simple, it is not simple to express the interest rate unless it is a plain vanilla-type tracker mortgage where it is the European Central Bank rate plus a fixed margin. Most tracker mortgages have been fine. They have been simple and have been adhered to from day one. The problems typically emerge either when the contract has not been clear or there has been some event such as moving between a fixed and a tracker mortgage. We can follow up on this but it is not my understanding that there has been a systemic deviation from legal obligations to write that front page.